Child Labor and Other Confessions

We are officially moving on Saturday - that's when the movers are coming. Until then, we will be packing and moving as much as we can by ourselves. To this end, we have resorted to using child labor.

I am very excited to move into our new house. It's out in the country. Harper will have a huge yard to play in. I can't say that I'll miss our apartment very much. We are currently living on the 3rd floor. There are 39 stairs to climb to get to our apartment. 39 stairs to carry Harper up and down every day. 39 stairs to carry groceries up. 39 stairs to climb when you get to the car and realize you forgot something on the kitchen counter. You get the picture.

Also...I have a turkey in my freezer. It's been there since last Thanksgiving. The university that I work for gives out turkeys every year at Thanksgiving as an employee appreciation gift. I don't know how to cook a turkey. Therefore, it has been in the freezer since I got it. My question for you is: Is it still good? Should we bother moving it to the new house or just toss it? Does anyone want it? Or better yet, does someone want to come to my house, cook it, and then we can have a dinner party? I'll cook everything else. You just take care of the bird. Deal?

Sleeping Beauty

I love getting pictures from Harper's teachers at baby school. It's so nice to see what she does all day. Here are two that absolutely crack me up. She fell asleep at the table during lunch! The kids usually take a nap right after lunch. I guess she just wanted to get a head start.

Cable TV Makes You A Better Person

Ok. Finally getting around to the post for today. I spent the morning having my brain fried by some tricky statistical analyses at work. Hate it when that happens. Anyway, today I would like to put forth the notion that cable TV makes you a better person. While this idea may seem a little counter intuitive, I assure you that it's correct. Because Rob has to get up at an ungodly hour and Harper is, well, a baby, the two of them are usually in bed by 8:30 or 9 at the latest. This means that after they go to bed, I get to watch what ever I want on TV - no Disney Channel, no cop shows. Now while I will agree that there is a lot of stupid stuff on cable TV (some of which I thoroughly enjoy), there are also some really good, enlightening, character building shows too. Here are a two of my recent favorites with links so you can watch them.

• MTVs 16 and Pregnant Catelynn episode - This is probably the best thing I've seen on TV in a long time. These kids blow my mind with their wisdom and strength.

• 30 Days Minimum Wage episode - I love this series. Every episode tackles a difficult issue and is very thought provoking. To watch this clip, you have to have a hulu account (it's free).

What have you seen on TV lately that really made you think?

Bit-N-Spin

A couple things for today. First, Harper got bit AGAIN at baby school yesterday! It was the same kid that did it last time. I figured out who it was, by the way. I counted teeth. Only one little boy had enough bottom teeth to leave the mark on Harper's arm. Forensics wins again!

Secondly, Harper is only 17 months old and she can do the Sit-N-Spin all by herself. I was pretty impressed. I know the quality of this video is horrible. I took it with my cell phone (and I don't have a fancy-schmancy cell phone). But, you get the gist.

Bye Bye

Just when I think I'm starting to get the hang of this whole baby thing, Harper throws me a curveball covered in bodily fluids. On Saturday, she had a massive poopy diaper blowout that required a bath for both baby and mommy. On Sunday during a routine visit to Sam's Club, I got a free sample of bacon and gave Harper a tiny piece to try. She started to choke on it, coughed a lot, and threw up in my hands. To my credit, not a speck of poop or vomit got on anything except me and her. Who knew I had this hidden talent of poop manager/ vomit catcher? Anyway, on a cuter note, Harper loves to say goodbye to Sage the cat in the morning. This morning, not only did she say goodbye, she also decided to give Sage a kiss. (PS - Don't mind the mess. We're moving in 2 weeks and packing has commenced.)

Melted and Busted

So, last night I started the dishwasher and about 30 minutes later I smelled burning plastic. Never good. When I opened the dishwasher to investigate, I found this.

It's a piece from one of Harper's bottles. It fell down to the bottom of the dishwasher and landed on the heating element that heats everything up during the drying cycle. Oh well. Good thing Harper doesn't use bottles anymore. Kind of.

I am in the process of uploading all of my old videos to Vimeo (It's way better than youtube. You should check it out.) While it's taking a long time to upload everything, I am having so much fun watching all of the old videos I took when Harper was little. Here's one of my absolute favorites. Basically, I found that I could get Harper to instantly stop crying if I just sang the theme from Ghostbusters. It seriously worked every time. I blogged about it here if you want to revisit the original post.

Question of the Day

What animal would you be if you could pick? I would be a jellyfish. I am fascinated with jellyfish. There are over 200 species and all of them are incredibly interesting and beautiful.

This is one of the largest species of jellyfish, the Nomura's jellyfish. It's a gentle giant, however it's infesting the coast of Japan right now and wreaking havoc on fishing nets.

This is the Irukandji jellyfish, the smallest species in the world. However, it's also considered to be one of the most deadly.

Jellyfish are beautiful in still pictures, but to truly appreciate them you have to watch them swim.

What animal would you be?